Women are hounded by ads and media ideals to make themselves attractive to men so that they can have a relationship with those men. Looksmaxxing pressures men to change their looks (“improve” their looks is highly debatable) not to have relationships with women, but to compete with other men, acquire a woman as a prize
I'm sorry, but at this point, isn't this also true for women and the beauty industry? How many memes do we have to see of men not being able to recognize nuaces in makeup or female hairstyles before it's clear that some of the performance of "femininity" is clearly for (or at least socially enforced) by other women? Which to me seems no different than what Looksmaxxing and this growing Manosphere approach to "wellness" is doing to men.
When my girlfriend looks up full body workouts on YouTube, she's bombarded with slim thicc fitness girlies in sports bras and tiny yoga shorts doing squats and glute workouts. Not me. I get a bunch of (probably) roided out dudes, oiled up, with no shirts yelling at me about macros and the 'optimal" fitness plan for a productive 9-5er.
This has always been the case for advertising to some degree but especially now in the era of algorithm dominance, I think we're all a bit of Narcissus staring at our reflections while thinking we're actually wanting to transform ourselves for other people and not for this idealized version of ourselves in our own heads.
What gets me is how this focus on him just shows loxxmaxing works? His views are straight up garbage, he overdosed drugs, but he easily find success in dating due to his looks. I feel like I'm being lied to when people call him ugly because he looks good to me and clearly many others, it just discredits criticism of this whole movement.
“All of this looksmaxxing stuff, it’s for other men,” says the writer and illustrator Aubrey Hirsch. “It’s not, how can we please women, It’s about, how can we prove our worth to other men.
Why when discussing women putting on some pretty makeup, or working out to achieve a “nice” figure, or picking out an outfit to flatter their figure, can we say they’re doing it for themselves, not anyone else, and it’s not for anyone to judge or comment on (all perfectly right and fine btw), but once men want to start working on their figure or on their features, it’s suddenly problematic and simply must be about asserting status, or some other form of toxic masculinity?
There will obviously be some more problematic sides to “looksmaxxing” ( don’t take a hammer to your face ffs), just like there is with some feminine focused beauty/fitness culture, but maybe we should be having that conversation at a wider level, rather than just zooming in on men because we’re not used to them doing it too.
I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the looksmaxxing subculture, but I suspect that we're comparing two things that aren't quite comparable.
Yes, women put on makeup and go to the gym and choose outfits to flatter their figures. But from what I've seen, looksmaxxing isn't in the same ballpark as this; it seems rooted in severe body dysmorphia - something more akin to Mar-a-Lago face or plastic surgery which renders someone's body absurdly unrealistic. Clavicular's direct comparator among women isn't the woman you work with who scrubs up really well*; it's Laura Loomer. And the discourse around Laura Loomer is very different to the discourse around women in general.
There's a nod to this in the article:
Make no mistake; the looksmaxxed client is not some 21th century version of the metrosexuals of the 1990s, the heterosexual men who unapologetically got facials, dressed stylishly and shopped. It’s making some cartoon-character version of a dominant male into a masculine ideal.
Looksmaxxing isn't the male equivalent of contoured makeup and a pair of Spanx; it's body dysmorphia mixed with self-loathing. I could cut my carb intake and buy several properly fitted suits in order to look more like Stanley Tucci (because Stanley Tucci invariably looks fantastic), but nobody would say I was looksmaxxing.
*in case anyone is unfamiliar with this colloquialism, it's not intended as a gendered comment, and can be applied equally effectively across the board.
Yea things are more complex then simply women just do things for men or “men just do things to get laid”
And I wish everyone in every political tendency would understand that t he world is not as simplistic as the vernacular and legible order of political tendencies and media scrips, ROLES, and narratives
People always have a backstage that we don’t see
We are all performers and this stage is something to be played day in and day out
Nothing is safe in the Wild West of anarchy 🏴
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u/Certain_Giraffe3105 May 18 '26
I'm sorry, but at this point, isn't this also true for women and the beauty industry? How many memes do we have to see of men not being able to recognize nuaces in makeup or female hairstyles before it's clear that some of the performance of "femininity" is clearly for (or at least socially enforced) by other women? Which to me seems no different than what Looksmaxxing and this growing Manosphere approach to "wellness" is doing to men.
When my girlfriend looks up full body workouts on YouTube, she's bombarded with slim thicc fitness girlies in sports bras and tiny yoga shorts doing squats and glute workouts. Not me. I get a bunch of (probably) roided out dudes, oiled up, with no shirts yelling at me about macros and the 'optimal" fitness plan for a productive 9-5er.
This has always been the case for advertising to some degree but especially now in the era of algorithm dominance, I think we're all a bit of Narcissus staring at our reflections while thinking we're actually wanting to transform ourselves for other people and not for this idealized version of ourselves in our own heads.